Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group

BFI Finance Indonesia has returned to the loan market for a $55m three year facility.

Power Grid Corporation of India has broken a seven-year absence from the international loan market to target Japanese liquidity for a ¥22bn ($201m) Samurai deal.

Singapore’s Interplex Holdings has returned for a $400m five year loan to refinance a 2016 borrowing that supported its acquisition by Baring Private Equity Asia.

French supermarket chain Auchan attracted plenty of demand for its third consecutive January new issue but it had to pay a hefty new issue premium to ensure the deal got done. The supermarket sector is one of several retail sectors priming investors for poor annual results.

Japanese banks are unlikely to enjoy any let-up from razor-thin net interest margins in 2019. This is worrying for their long-term sustainability, but it’s potentially a bonanza for DCM specialists in Europe and the US.

Volkswagen Bank started its funding for 2019 with a hefty four tranche deal on Thursday that will contribute to its minimum requirement of own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) when the German regulator decides what that should be.

New issuance returned to the corporate bond market on Tuesday as Auchan and Vonovia attracted €8bn of demand for their new deals after two days without any trades. The new issuance spreads they paid differed markedly however.

Leveraged finance markets in Europe are looking up, and bankers expect they may even see some deals priced before long.

Isabel Mahony, who had been head of fixed income sales and trading EMEA and Asia ex-Japan at SMBC Nikko Capital Markets, has left to the firm to join children's magazine Scoop as chief financial officer.

The new-look Fox Corp made its dollar bond debut this week as the technical backdrop in the investment grade continued to improve with tightening spreads and thinner new issue concessions.

Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) has launched a $700m multi-tranche loan into general syndication, raising some debate among bankers about the tight pricing on offer.

In this round-up, China’s foreign exchange reserves rebounded slightly for the second month in a row, Standard Chartered’s index for international RMB usage fell again, and China's consumer price index (CPI) inflation decelerated at the close of 2018.